Vail Ranch extends its learning borders

TEMECULA -- They haven't graduated from middle school yet, but
they've already been ambassadors to The Netherlands.

The 18 Vail Ranch Middle School students who returned last week
from a 12-day student exchange program and goodwill trip to
Voorburg, the Netherlands, all agree that things are very different
abroad.

Instead of catching the bus to school, Voorburg kids opt to
peddle their bikes to class. Instead of pizza for lunch, students
there eat white bread with chocolate syrup. Instead of knowing one
foreign language, students there know four or five.

Temecula and Voorburg have been sister cities for about 11
years. Temecula and Voorburg students travel between the two cities
alternating yearly. Last year, Dutch teens visited Temecula. This
year, it was the Temecula students' turn.

While in Voorburg, the students stayed with host families and
juggled their school work at the Dalton School with sightseeing
trips to museums and monuments.

They also met with city and government officials and conducted
radio interviews.

Eighth-grader Katie Barnard discussed the recent school
shootings in San Diego during a radio show in Voorburg. Katie said
she discovered that while schools appear much more lax in the
Netherlands, there is far less school violence.

"I think we have a lot to learn from them about school
violence," she said. "To get a gun is much harder there and hardly
anyone there has a gun. Even though school is much more relaxed
there, that kind of violence never happens and people really take
offense to having a gun."

Most of the Vail Ranch students had been corresponding with pen
pals from abroad since October and finally got the chance to met
them. For another student, Lindsay Dole, it was "a
once-in-a-lifetime opportunity."

"We had no clue what people look like over there or what our pen
pals are like at home," Lindsay said. "So going there you see their
life in a totally new perspective and you learn about yourself.
School was fun, too."

Melissa Stones was shocked that unlike her school in Temecula,
campuses in The Netherlands are not surrounded by chain-link
fences.

"There's definitely more freedom there than here," said Melissa.
"They can ditch school and they wouldn't get punished, because it's
their responsibility to do their homework and go to school. They
don't take advantage of that freedom either, which is something a
lot of kids here would do."

Tina Parks, another eighth-grader who participated in the trip,
said she was impressed by the differences in how students abroad
did their homework.

"Here we get an assignment and it's due the next day, but there
they get a long list of assignments for the month and they do it on
their own time," she said. "Their way seems a lot more realistic
for preparing students for a higher level of learning at the
university."

While she enjoyed it, Brittany Spence thought the school
atmosphere abroad could be too lackadaisical for some students.

"If students are able to leave school or opt out of testing that
easy, then they could fall behind in work," she said. "I think
there's too much freedom over there for some students and they need
more rules like we have here."